


In the Shepherd’s Care

by eruriotica (minxiebutt)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alaska, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comfort, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2020-10-26 19:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxiebutt/pseuds/eruriotica
Summary: He saw her like a little lamb in need.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> born with best friends' ideas. nonlinear storytelling.

It starts like this: Nanaba escapes and runs and runs, finding herself in a forest with a big man aiming a shotgun at her and a loud dog barking at her. She’s crouching down behind a fallen tree, twisted ankle, blistered feet inside shoes half torn to hell. Home is a long way behind her but she didn’t have a destination in mind, just wanted to get anywhere but home. 

They discuss it like this:  _ you can stay here if you earn your keep, this ain’t a charity house; if ya ain’t cut out for it, I’ll drive ya into the city and drop ya off _ . Which is not a discussion, but rather an offer, although a harsh one. 

“Aren’t you worried I might… you know,” Nanaba trails off. It’s unheard of to let strangers right into one’s private property without thieving repercussion. And he’s just gonna let her stay?

“Worried ‘bout what?” The man cocks his shotgun but doesn’t aim it at her again.

She looks at the double barrels. He’s made his point. Raising one hand, she offers her agreement to the bargain. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Okay.” The man shakes her hand, nearly amputating her fingers and breaking her knuckles in his grip, letting up only a little when she hisses.

So, it begins like this: he makes her walk all the way to his home on the twisted ankle, but once they arrive, he wraps it up nice and tight for her, his hands big enough to break the delicate web of bones and ligaments thrice over in a single squeeze if he so wished.

Nanaba sets the plate down in front of him without a thank-you. She’s found a long time ago that she stopped expecting it.

The quiet dining room is broken by the soft scraping of knife and fork on ceramic, and then, “Too much salt.”

Her shoulders tense. She doesn’t anticipate any backlash from him, but her own mind is not so tender. Yet another fuck-up, yet another reason he’s never going to love her. Why can’t she just get her act together and do things the way he told her to?

She sits at the other end of the table and looks down at her own plate. Self-loathing chokes out her appetite and then rises with nausea from her stomach, making her want to throw up and run to her bed and cry, all at once. The feeling is made worse by Mike ignoring her even though he eats the eggs.  _ Waste not, _ that’s what he’s always telling her. It’s  _ her _ fault that he’s stuck eating an oversalted breakfast. Nana shoves her own meal down her throat just to get it over with, then washes the dishes and excuses herself to the chicken coups. 

The girls are lively today. Spring has them running around with jubilance that Nanaba wishes she could grasp. Squatting among them, she brings herself to a trustworthy level before tossing out handfuls of feed and talking to them. She compliments their feathers and their pecking order before rising to go clean their coup and empty their nests. Nanaba drops the basket of eggs off in her kitchen before getting the large colander and heading to the greenhouse. Mike has already packed up and taken the dogs with him, tending to his sheep. If only she could be as good to him...

In the greenhouse, the ties on her emotions unravel. Bunching up her apron in her fists, she cries into the cream cotton. When she goes back inside an hour later, Mike is back, standing in the kitchen, a raw slab of something new and young waiting on the butcher block island.

“How are the lambs?” She asks, setting the colander of fruits and vegetables down in the sink to rinse. Behind her, Mike grunts out a sound that she interprets as mostly-positive, so she goes about washing the dirt from the lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots. The greenhouse temperature is set right on the cusp, so she’s not expecting the same sweet tomatoes like they’re able to get in the peak of summer. Yet, she doesn’t mind so much. It’s not like she was  _ ever _ able to eat fresh fruit back in the city.

Nanaba jumps, startled by a hand on her waist, and looks up to see Mike right beside her, looking down into her face. She can feel lingering puffiness around her eyes, so she tries to turn away, but he’s so strong, grabbing hold of her jaw between fingers that could break her neck so easily. Resigning to the inspection, she closes her eyes, letting him look her over, and when he’s done, he kisses her forehead and slowly,  _ slowly _ releases her. 

Before she opens her eyes, she hears his reserved tone carrying the words, “A few oversalted eggs ain’t gonna kill me, buttermilk.”

And just like that, she’s choking on a sob, raising her hands to cry into their safety. But he grips her wrists, pulling that self-safety away to draw her into his bosom instead. His hand on her waist tugs her in, his other letting go of the fine bones to cup the back of her head, digits slipping off the bandana tied around her hair. Blonde slips down over her shoulders as he pets it, admiring it. The boy-ish haircut is two years gone; it falls around her shoulders in thick curls. Two years gone are the binders and jeans and t-shirts; loose dresses and aprons and cardigans fill her half of their wardrobe. 

“I’m sorry,” she sobs out, emotional tangle renewed. Finally, she looks up at his face, nothing given away. The beard hides any hints he might give.

“It’s really upsetting you,” Mike notes. Nanaba looks away, shy nodding. Where he cups her head, fingers knead. 

The chores start in this way:  _ I expect you to be my shadow and when I say do somethin’, ya do it _ .

He’s got little patience for teaching her the household tasks that he believes she should already know, but he’s more lenient in her learning the farm work. One of the first things he teaches her is how to separate cream to form buttermilk and butter. 

“From sheep?” She asks, shoulders curled in. She’s used to her chest looking flat, not like this. 

Mike pours cream into a jar to give to her. “Sheep’s milk is sweeter.”

It’s her second spring on the homestead. She’s still getting used to the demands of an increasing flock. Mike’s gone with the dogs before she even gets out of bed. By the time she dresses, prepares breakfast, and gets ready to go find him so that he can eat, he’s barreling into the house with happy hounds yipping around him.

There’s a dead coyote thrown over his shoulder. 

“Got him before he got any of ‘em,” Mike volunteers. There’s the barest bit of a smile on his mouth as he leans down and kisses her forehead before he disappears with his dogs and the coyote down into the basement.

There will be another pelt for her to add to the big blanket spanning their bed.

The first winter catches her like this: unprepared for the violence of the cold. She’s got no insulating fat on her bones because boys don’t carry fat and she wanted to be a good boy. The fox furs that Mike’s accumulated over the summer line the Carhartt jacket he’s purchased for her; any hesitation she’s had to give up her city chic vegetarianism is squished by the provided warmth.

“You’re a really sweet girl,” is his first compliment. She’s been in the shepherd’s care for only a week, and this is more words at once than Nanaba thinks he’s said to her. 

She’s on the silent side of speechless. 

“But goddamn, you’re anxious.”

“It’s just eggs, little buttermilk,” Mike promises her. He’s so stoic, sometimes she can’t take it, can’t take not knowing a single thing he’s thinking when he’s able to understand what worries her with a single look. 

“I disappointed you,” she murmurs. Just acknowledging the weight on her shoulders reduces it, but she looks to him to remove it completely.

“You please me a lot more than you disappoint me,” he tells her. Mike pushes both hands into her hair and tilts her head back. Rarely is he this affectionate all at once, and rarely does she realise her thirst until he is. “You’re a good girl.”

Nanaba closes her eyes and tries, tries so hard to accept this and let it be true. He kisses her with one hand cradling her nape or the back of her head, and still, it weakens her knees to have him hold her so possessively. 

He asks her to stay; not really asks, but offers to let her stay like this:  _ If y’er gonna be here for winter, suppose I oughta teach ya how to shoot. _

He’s been showing her how to clean and store his guns, some unknown intimacy that she doesn’t understand until he takes hold of her fingers and shows her exactly how to wipe down the small pieces. 

“You done good this summer,” Mike says after he corrects the way she was handling the metal. “Better than I thought.”

She doesn’t know what else to say but, “Thank you.” Because his satisfaction is understood by a lack of reprimand-- he’s never so verbal, let alone verbal in  _ praise _ .

“You can stay as a hand.” Mike speaks low, quiet, so very firm, so sure and steadfast, “But I’d rather marry you.”

Metal clatters on wood as Nanaba drops whatever part was in her hands.

Mike proves his observant nature. “You’re doin’ a lot better out here, not so anxious as much. You got a natural way with all this, once ya figured it out.” He carefully finishes assembling a cleaned handgun and sets it down before turning his full attention onto her. “You like me. I’m fond of you. I’d like to court ya.”

“Court?”

“A relationship, intending for marriage.” 

Nanaba curls her shoulders in. The shepherd has been kind to her, and he’s right, she does like him. But they’ve talked before about his lifestyle, the things he wants in his life. He’s got so many years on her… She squeaks, “I can stay even if I say no?”

Mike reaches out and does something he’s never done before, drapes his hand over hers. By reflex, she relaxes, eyes darting up to find him watching her. 

Mike keeps a big truck in a shed off beside the house. Every so often, Nana climbs up into it with his help, and they drive into the city. Other times, they attach the trailer to it and load some of the sheep and rams and lambs into it. Less often than that, they bring home a pig from trade. 

The first autumn on the homestead, Nanaba helps to fill the chest freezers in the basement. They prepare roasts and hams to be eaten later in the winter, even make some bacon in small servings, and then they make sausage until she dreams about handling the casings. The fox fur in the Carhartt jacket becomes much appreciated as the temperature drops lower and lower without dragging itself back up to the previous day’s high.

Her insulation finally comes bit by bit, and she coyly enjoys that Mike notices. 

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nonlinear. discussions of sex, pregnancy, sexual trauma. levi and erwin and their shit ton of kids make an appearance.

She tells him why she ran like this:  _ my mother is only fifteen years older than me _ . Because a teen mom wanted to prevent her daughter from making the same mistake, she forced birth control onto Nana. And since Nana didn’t have a need for it, she just didn’t take the pills, but when she was found out, all hell broke loose. Instead of trusting Nana, her mother insisted on an IUD and dragged her to the clinic and tried to hold her down while her mother’s RN friend forced her legs open—

The shepherd puts an arm around her when she begins to shake, the retelling reigniting dormant fight or flight. She has felt no loss of family, no homesickness since being here, and she realises that no one has been looking for her either, a realisation that has fangs filled with the venom of acceptance: she is free of the story she is telling, and it gives her the strength to continue. 

“So I ran,” she finishes, hand hovering over her mouth framed by tear trails. “And then you found me.”

What she doesn’t say:  _ you found me as if I were meant to belong to you _ . 

Because this whole story started with Mike asking her if she had ever used birth control and she’d shaken her head, a little embarrassed to admit her less than ideal views on hormonal contraceptives and her dislike of them, and she’d felt safely validated to have him reject their use as well. 

When they go into the city for the very first time together, Mike takes a handgun in a holster. He helps Nanaba up into his truck and then climbs in himself. She’s surprised to find that his homestead is not hours from the city, but then again, she knows that it shouldn’t be. It had taken her an entire day to run and run and run onto his property at the far edges, but within half an hour, the dirt road leads them back to a place she knows. 

His first stop is the bank, and she watches the teller slide him an envelope with more cash than she’s ever seen in her life, all as his gun waits patiently in its holster in her peripheral vision. She’s fearfully nervous at having so much money, but he’s strong, tall, confident, and armed. He doesn’t bat an eyelash.

He drives her to one of the rugged outfitters and after deciding that she’ll wear long skirts from now on, he helps her get fitted for summer boots and for warmer winter boots because summer is swift this far north.

“You’re done growing, right?” He asks, kneeling before her, having to look up at her, both his hands on her ankle just like that first night not too long ago.

She’s stricken speechless, only nodding. Nana doesn’t know why it lurches in her gut to see him on his knees before her— him, in all his bulking strength, with careful fingers on the tiny parts of her body.

Mike seems unaffected by being in this position. He’s all business. “Good, you oughta wear these for years, then.” 

Long drives go like this: Mike packs up his dogs and they lay in the footwell in the backseat, and while Nana typically rides up front, the hum of the diesel engine and the warmth from the heater makes her sleepy enough that Mike usually smirks, “Why don’t you lay down in the back?”

Nanaba likes to lay with her head on the passenger side of the backseat bench, pillowed with her arm, because here she can watch Mike as he drives, drives, drives them back home.

The Smiths have a great big pig ranch way, way down in Anchorage, and they will sometimes trade their piglets for some of Mike’s lambs. 

Despite the two Mr. Smiths and Mike looking about the same age, the ranch is teeming with children, all adopted, some siblings in blood, all siblings by family. They’re a severely orderly bunch, but she doesn’t mind the time she spends with them. She always learns a few things from their structure and implements those things back home. 

“I’m not good with kids,” she insists on the ninth or tenth visit down, but Levi hands her a baby and doesn’t take no for an answer. She follows his instruction, holding the infant on her hip. 

“They’re mostly happy just to be on you,” he lets her know. “Babies this age aren’t hard to please. They like being held.”

“That’s something y’all have in common,” Mike chimes in, meant for a joke. 

Levi does sort of laugh, then defends Nana with, “Stop teasing your bride, you old man.”

“That’s gonna be the mother of my children,” Mike grins, and she can’t help the way the smile spreads over her own face. 

Levi looks between them, brows raised, inquiring but not willing to ask. They’ve been married a long while and no news of impending little ones tends to mean bad things. But happily, she nods. 

In that first homestead winter, before she starts putting some meat on her bones, the little runaway gets sick. And not just a little sick; she is more ill than Mike has ever seen in a human, so in his lack of expertise, he calls the only person who will give him sound advice. They were in the city just a few days ago, that’s where she must’ve picked up a bug, and being such a thin little thing, of course she wouldn’t stand a chance. He describes to his brother the swollen lymph nodes puffing out her throat, the chills, the aches of indeterminate origin that dominate her body. 

“She’s not dying,” Levi says, background noise of the newest baby, clearly unhappy that her caretaker’s attention is elsewhere. “But she should see a doctor soon.”

So Mike sets the truck to warming up and knocks on her bedroom door to a low groaning answer. The whole room smells like a hot body in immune system overdrive, and she’s wild clinging to him as he picks her up and gets her to the truck. 

When it’s all said and done and he’s getting them back home at two in the morning, the runaway is temporarily relieved of her misery, sleeping with the help of medications and the truck’s diesel engine. Mike carries her back into his home, now their home, and to her bed. He means to go, but she grips his wrist and doesn’t let him release her to the sheets alone. 

“Stay,” she murmurs, nearly incoherent. Fever haze and medicine-induced dreams. 

He’s not going to sleep in her bed because even though she’s his wife, she hasn’t sought to spend a night sleeping in his arms yet; but he does sit with her for a little while, petting her in his unpracticed way. 

She’s come to him in the most unconventional of ways and Mike is determined to take the best care of her that he can. He don’t think of himself a hero but with her, it has always felt like his duty to protect and provide for her from the very first moment he laid eyes on her. Some deep instinct tells him that she was always meant to belong to him and flourish in his care. He’s gonna do right for this girl.

The shepherd marries her like this: a sunny morning at the courthouse before her first autumn on the homestead turns into winter. While in the city, they go out to eat at a sit-down sort of place, a private celebration between them, and then head back home for the daily duties. There are chickens to feed and pigs whose stalls need scooping and sheep to usher back in from the clearing. 

“I ain’t gonna try and bed you yet. I don’t miss somethin’ I never known,” he promises her, and she’s happily surprised by the confession. 

Even though she can tell how much he likes holding her and likes kissing her, he makes good on his word and doesn’t pressure her beyond a good cuddle on the sofa, no matter how much time passes since their vows. Being close to him physically is pleasant, Nana thinks. He is warm always, all those solid muscles burning hotter than her spindly ones. He’s warm and he’s hairy, too, unlike the movie stars that lend her an uneducated idea of the naked adult man. Mike isn’t like that. His gently sculpted chest and abdomen are hairy, and he grunts whenever Nana curiously spears her fingers into the thicker trail that runs up from his waistband and tucks into his belly button. His beard actually grows all the way down his neck, but he keeps those parts trimmed close— not  _ shaven _ , only trimmed, and she can still touch their blunt, clipped ends at any moment. 

More and more often, she lays him beneath her just to learn him, just to understand him. Because he’s patient with her hands. She asks why, one night when she’s sitting on the floor beside his feet, her head resting on his knee. 

“I gotta let you learn not to be so ashamed of the things that come naturally between man and woman,” he says, like it’s matter of fact. “I want you when you’re ready for all that sex does to two people.”

“When we have sex,” she asks, later that night, not so hypothetically. “Will we ever use condoms?”

“No,” he answers. “I want to be inside  _ you, _ not a plastic bag. That’s wastin’ my seed.”

She covers her mouth to hide her shy smile, and says from behind her fingers, “You want me to get pregnant?” 

This isn’t the first time they’ve discussed sex, so this answer, she already knows. Her shepherd has explained his desire for children, a desire they share. But she wants to hear him say it again, because the way he practically growls when he says it makes her belly feel tight and hot. 

Taking hold of her nape, Mike pulls her up to meet his kiss, and obliges right against her lips, “I wanna breed you  _ good _ , buttermilk. Fill you up and watch you get all round with my love.”

The first several times they make love comes with shy excitement like this: she lays out on his bed and spreads her legs, face hot like an oven, the secret place in her body even hotter because he’s standing above her and he’s only wearing his jeans and she can see that he’s hard and huge against the zipper. 

It takes her no time at all to get less bashful and to pounce like a predator in her own right, surprising him by getting on her knees and loving him with her sweet mouth or hiking up her skirt to invite him to breed her. 

And his approach proves right, because she feels no shame at all in how she wants him and how she wants to fuck him. 

“Buttermilk,” he croons in the bathtub, cupping her cheek. She’s curled up, knees in her chest where she sits between his spread legs, as if she’s taking up as little space as possible. “You still upset?”

“I am,” she murmurs, tucking her forehead against her knees, tears welling all over again just for the mention of his oversalted breakfast. 

“This ain’t like you,” he hums. “Bein’ so upset for so long.”

“I’m sorry, I just,” but she falls silent as he gently wedges a hand between her body and knees, finding her abdomen and kneading his fingers in tenderly. 

He leans close and kisses her damp shoulder. Against her soft skin, the shepherd asks, “When’s your period?”

“Tomorrow,” she murmurs, but the way her husband is looking at her makes her suddenly doubt that it will come. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> might write a detached drabble of mike and nana fucking that's just 500 words of breeding kink. 
> 
> thank you for reading <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and the marriage bed undefiled (the smut).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i threatened a breeding scene. y'all requested the scene. i wrote the scene. so i think it goes without saying:
> 
> warning for breeding kink
> 
> enjoy <3

Carefully, she cracks the door and peeks inside. Nana joins him in the bath all the time, but she rarely does so with seduction. Tonight, however, there’s a fire burning in the pit of her stomach that only her husband can quench. 

Mike is stretched out in the deep, porcelain tub freestanding apart from the wall of their bathroom. His arms rest along the edges, his head is thrown back, his eyes are closed. There’s a warm towel resting on his hair. The tiles keep bountiful steam in circulation. 

He hums at the sounds she makes, coming in, closing the door, the rustles of her clothes hitting the floor. The hot water burns her icy toes but she plunges in between his knees regardless, knowing the heat will be welcome soon enough in her tired muscles. 

She starts by laying her hands on the upper insides of his thighs, making him crack open his eyes to watch her beneath his lashes. Tongue swipes of over lips; the hunger is mutual. 

Nana makes a show of sinking below the water, coming closer to him, blindly finding his cock. She opens her mouth under the water and takes him inside, just a few moments of pressure before she comes up for air. When she surfaces, Mike grabs her jaw and raises her to accept his kiss, tasting her and a little of himself. 

“Don’t make me soil this bath,” he chides but it’s more encouraging. He wants to draw out his pleasure and take hers along for the ride. After they wash and dry, Mike’s cock stirring the entire time, he leads her to bed and with hands on her shoulders, forcing her down into the sheets. Those big hands run down her body, groping her breasts, murmuring, “So soft.” When his hands get to her knees, he forces them apart as she sighs and leans back on her elbows. He’s on his knees now, licking his lips, predatory glint in his eyes. She’s still warm from the bath so the first lap of his tongue meets sensitive folds and she warbles out a shaky call of his name. He only laughs, “You taste so good, you must be fertile again.”

Nana brings her fingers knotting into his hair and then she shoves him back between her legs️, and he doesn’t waste any time eating her out until she’s right on the cusp. 

He pulls his mouth from her throbbing, wet cunt and growls, “You love when I get the blood flowing down here so your womb is nice and warm for my seed, don’t you?”

She nods, cheeks going pink at the way his words make her want him inside of her even more. 

“You want me to breed you,” he says and he sinks his mouth onto one of her breasts and sucks a bruise into the underside. He disconnects with a  _ pop. _ “Give these a reason to fill up with milk.”

They’ve avoided penetration around ovulation for a while, so the threat has held little value until more recently, and that value has transformed it from a threat to a promise. 

Mike curls one massive finger inside of her and pulls it back, slicked to the knuckle in the proof that an egg awaits. “You’re so ready to get bred, you’ll suck in everything I give you, won’t you? You’ll treat my seed so well.”

She’s helpless to do little more than nod, caught in the combination of his words and the way he’s looking down at her like a hot, delicious meal to eat. They’re both impatient from her teasing and his wicked mouth. He climbs onto the bed, spreads her legs by grasping her knees, and after an agonising pause, pushes his cock inside of her. The stretch and pressure is enough to send her climaxing already, back arching, smaller hands locking around her husband’s wrists as his shallow thrusts lengthen her pleasure. Sounds that are usually so unlike her are pouring out like it’s the only noise she can make, because he feels so good, he’s so big and hot and it’s touching everything inside of her. Nana looks down at her belly, the slight distension from his cock, and throws her head back. Her fingers tighten on his wrists as his thrusts becoming harder; her body is given over to instincts in the face of such immense pleasure, bearing down on squeezing around Mike’s cock. Already, she’s rolling between orgasms, swept into the current of a rushing river during the spring break up, but her husband is only getting started. Despite their shared leap into sexual activity, he’s a stranger to premature ejaculation. He’s got  _ stamina _ . 

Not only does he have stamina, but he’s rough in his pursuit and she loves that so much. She loves his possessive hands, his growls, the way he will manhandle her into the position he wants and then hold her down and make her  _ take _ it. When he puts her on her hands and knees and then smashes her face into the sheets and half-smothers her as he’s fucking her so hard and fast that she cries? That’s got to be one of her favourites, especially when that’s how their morning begins. The slight limp makes her remember and blush all day. 

The wet patch in the sheets is growing unreasonably large when Mike pushes her knees up and leans over to start kissing her. Burying himself deep, he whispers, “Take my love.”

The motion is pushing so much pressure on her abused g-spot that she’s whimpering, “I’m dying” in the most pathetic little voice, but that’s how overstimulated she is. Still, having his cum is soothing,  _ rewarding _ . 

“There ya go,” he croons, reaching one hand down to rub the rolls of her belly, produced from being bent in half. “Take it and use it. Don’t waste it.”

She nods, closing her eyes. With his other hand, he cups her cheek and kisses her mouth with satisfied postcoital tenderness. With her eyes still closed, she pleads, an echo of his own words, “Make me grow round with your love.”

“You will,” he promises, diving down for another kiss. “I’ll get you pregnant and you’ll bear my children.”

It might’ve scared her at some point, the thought of reproducing, but with her shepherd, it feels natural. She wants to feel his baby kick, she wants to give birth here in their home, she wants to breastfeed his baby. She wants to have his children and raise them with her shepherd. Nana now wants what Mike has wanted and what he has waited patiently for. She  _ wants _ . 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading~


End file.
